Lomborg's economists find their voices (at last)

John Quiggin triggers a long campaign of comment wars with these comments on the collapse of a good deal of Bjorn Lomborg's credibility in his "Copenhagen Consensus" game.

"Robert Mendelsohn, a conservative Yale economist who was an official “critic” of the climate paper in this process, goes further: because Dr Cline’s positions are “well out of the mainstream”, he had no choice but to reject them. He worries that “climate change was set up to fail.”
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3630425

What - Lomborg set up a project in such a way as to fail in the direction best suited to the political end of destroying popular concern for the environment and public faith in science? Who'd have thought that? (More than just Quiggin and I thought it, actually).

The Independent May 2004
Guardian September 2000
Lovelock accepts that global warming caused by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations is further amplified by feedback effects (largely from water vapour) that are themselves considerably more potent than the original warming stimulus.

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

James Wolcott quotes extensively from Eliot Weinberger including:

"I heard the president say that Iraq is 'a threat of unique urgency, and that there is 'no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised'"

"I heard the vice president say: 'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.'"
..........

The show-stopping bon mot of the title is by the inimitable Rummy, having one of his blonde moments.

"Ask a Nineteenth-Century Whaling Expert"

Don't miss this brilliant post and comments (dsquared's surely contends for "best blog comment ever") at Crooked Timber! The rise and rise of the moronic right heralds great times for humour.

OK for those too lazy or too sceptical to take the hint and just read the post, here is dsquared's comment, holus:

My latest column at “Whale Central Station” is up, exposing the leftist myth of finite whale supplies.

1. Whales breed. Therefore, the potential supply of whales is unlimited.

2. As whaling technology improves, our ability to exploit this limited supply of whales becomes ever-greater. A few years ago, 40 whales in a four year trip was regarded as good going. Modern Norwegian whalers capture and process 40 whales a month. All of the estimates of the “sustainability” of the whale-based economy were put together before such inventions as exploding harpoons. And remember that the supply of whales is self-replenishing. Leftists seem not to understand that whales have sex.

3. Reducing whaling would cost vast amounts of money and destroy our economy; credible estimates would suggest that without whale-oil lamps we would all sit around in the dark until we die. This money would better be spent on providing aid to the Inuit.

4. We can’t give the Inuit property rights over their whales to help them manage the speed of whaling, because that’s just politically impractical.

5. Arrrrr!
Posted by dsquared · January 31, 2005 05:01 PM